


{I could lie to you you all my days} But you're the one

by Fake_Brit



Category: Veronica Mars (Movie 2014), Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Logan POV of the movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 20:13:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3181646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fake_Brit/pseuds/Fake_Brit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> Nine years, and reading her still comes as naturally as closing your eyes against sunlight. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	{I could lie to you you all my days} But you're the one

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, Marshmallows. Ever since I wrote Piz's P.O.V. of the movie, I've had the idea of writing Logan's as well, combining my first shot at smut and at what goes through his head. Please, let me know whether you enjoyed/found typos/have spot OOC and/or you think I should steer-clear of Logan's head or smut scenes and just read either.  
> Many thanks to my friend Giò who, as little as she knows about Veronica, has held my hand through a massive What-The-Hell-Am-Doing-With-My-Favourite-Character(s) moment.   
> All of the characters/events are Rob Thomas's. I just have fun with them

It starts – _again_ – with, “I need your help, Veronica.”

Has it ever stopped, though, Logan? Have _you_ ever stopped _– -_ out of habit he snaps the door of his mind shut at the end of the thought, – two words. Two. Damn. Simple. Words. Words he’s been running from for nine years – and yet it leaks through, taking down his barrier, leaving behind a broken, useless, worn out dam. _Loving her._

_ Have you ever stopped loving her, Logan?  _ He asks himself this question after nine years and it nearly knocks the wind out of his lungs.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale, and – _repeat._ Repeat until your pulse slows.

“I don’t really,” a pause. His breath hitches in his throat, anticipation – hope. Faith, really. Undying. Unshakable – piling up his spine. “…do that anymore.” Her voice trembles for a second and she sounds ready to hang up one him, nine years and a(nother) desperate call – should he go straight to cry? After all, he’s known for skipping middle ground – later.

His heart sinks in his chest further and further away from his reach, as he realizes that her saying no is a real chance.

He swallows what feels like sandpaper. “Look, just hear me out,” he considers adding please, but stops. He isn’t nineteen anymore. Isn’t really as helpless as he was back then. And he will show her. “okay?”

She relents, eventually.

_ She’s coming back. _

The answer to his earlier question steals his breath, once he has put the phone away and let the euphoric wave pass.

It’s a soft, shaken, muted murmur. _I haven’t._

-:-

He has no idea why he is picking her up at the airport in his uniform, but if his hours of therapy have taught him anything it might have something to do with wanting to throwback to the fact that he did grow up in her face. Andalso the fact that she wasn’t there at the time.

Okay, he is doing it entirely because he wants to shock her. And for old times’ – hers, really – sake.

She barely resists the urge to gape at him and have her jaw cuddling with floor. _Nine years, and reading her still comes as naturally as closing your eyes against sunlight._

He hears her uttering a question, which is, guess it at your own discomfort, sarcastic, – big surprise there, totally – and he has to thank whatever lives up there for his newly found self-control. Had this happened more than five years ago, he’d be leading her to some random place, maybe a motel,where the would yell their lungs off at each other, throwing in some huge words like _trust issues_ and _controlling behavior_ , jump at each other thinking they would patch up the wound, and then yell some more and watch all they wanted crumble to the ground like Domino pieces.

Sounds like a ballsy course of action, right? 

Yeah, he thinks. One of those that would lead the guy who follows them to being gutted out and killed mercilessly.

Instead, reality shines in front of him: she’s back to save his ass from jail time – for the third time. And she isn’t going to jump at him or turn her life around to help him. She isn’t going to get her hands on the case, either. It’s just lawyer interviewing with an almost lawyer as a judge. _Handy, right?_

They settle in silence after a few jokes.

At first, Logan has no damn idea what to make of the fact that the only noise between them is the engine running.

Of course, he expected the conversation to be… How can he put it?Scarce? Nonexistent? A vision on his deathbed? Comparable to asking for a miracle? But the silence pressing on him like a tight coat, stretching out between them like a never-ending highway, – no pun intended there – well… that hadn’t exactly been in the spotlight on his _What To Expect When You Cross Paths With Veronica Again (Maybe in a decade or so)_ list.

It is both familiar and unfamiliar, not to mention flat out scary. When it comes to the blonde on the passenger seat of his car Logan has never been able to pinpoint what draws him to her and vice versa.

He just knows that, at least on his part. it hasn’t faded or fallen asleep or frozen or whatever the fuck it is feelings do when one pays them no heed in over a decade, and that alone scares the shit out of him.

_ (And one more thing he knows but is scared to death of admitting is, it consumes you) _

But he’s sure she has something to go back to once she finishes here. Something big and definitely Veronica-worthy.

Which is why he drops her of at her dad and doesn’t mentions any of the mind-shattering crap he’s thinking. And yet, he has to ask. _Dammit, Logan, isn’t your life looking enough hell-like, right now?_ Way to dig the knife into the fucking wound, huh? “So, do you think I did it?” The words slip away from him in a hurry, as if her answer could bring him on the brink of death and back – or not. 

“I wouldn’t be here, if I did,” if it were anybody else, he’d scratch his nose, looking for a bright lie sign. But it isn’t.

This is Veronica Mars, for God’s sake.

This is Veronica, and Veronica wouldn’t lie about this.

( _Here’s another truth: her words stick with him all night, echoing in his head. He’d thought that, present or not, whatever he felt wasn’t gonna affect him directly._

_ Instead, it ignites hope. Bright and huge and all encompassing, growing by the minute) _

-:-

He enters the reunion like somebody would enter a room full of acid.

It’s about Carrie, he mutters to himself, while eyeing the room. Scanning, actually. 

_ It’s about Carrie and handing her killer’s ass to jail. _ No justice. He almost lets the cold bitter laugh that word brings up his throat out among the crowd. _There’s no such thing as justice in this seaside hellhole. And after your third misplaced arrest there ain’t much hope resembling material either._

He heads towards the couch where he spotted Sean a little while ago, hoping to keep it quiet and just get it done in a couple of minutes, but of course Karma has to go and wear its bitchy face just for him. _Missed making my life hell in the wake of being Aaron’s spawn, have you?_

“Murderer!” Someone yells, as if they were proclaiming how much gleeful they are about being here. Which, Logan assumes dryly, is probably due to the loads of beer they’ve been drinking. He suspects that if he blinked, time would magically go back to 2006 and he’d be… Murder charge free? Maybe, if the carousel decided to be good and stop around June…Yay, Echolls.

( _But also dealing with a shitload of PTSD, the terror of cracking. And cracking she-who-must-not-be-named._

_ Oh, _

_ God. _

_ That fear that did suffocate him once shit hit the fan as foreseen and that gut-rotting disgust that followed. _

_ Yay, Logan Echolls. Angst-and-drama-flavored pot brewer extraordinaire. Indeed) _

 

Years in the Navy have sharpened – okay, recreated from the ashes – his self control to the point where no matter if – _how much_ , something inside of him mutters stirring (back?) to life – his hands and knuckles itch to throw a punch, he breathes steadily through his nose and reign it in and keep going on his own way, maybe throwing the hit at a wall or during training.

But lately fighting the urge has felt more like growing a clone and physically having to fight himself.

Ever since things between him and Carrie headed and reached south, he has felt it all – anger, disappointment, the good ole overprotective shark that was Teen Logan and the blood-icing fear yet again – simmering bright-fire-red, closer and closer to melting the surface off permanently with each breath taking, lightening-quick wave.

And now, when his mind succeeds at bringing the reunion back in focus, he feels the hard-earned self control wavering and does the only thing a caged animal – again, teen self, anyone? – would do. He flees the room.

Veronica catches on and sprints after him, her mask of annoyance shattered in the wake of a lead lighting up her features.

“Logan, wait!”

He is not facing her, but he could see her effortlessly – rosy cheeks, eyes bright with a possible lead and backstory, excitement showing in long, quick strides and casual, unintentional movements he still remembers like tapping her fingers and readjusting her hair behind her ears –and the tone of her voice, so breathless as though she had been running for hours and needed to catch a breath right now and her chest rising and falling with quick, giddy breaths.

_ Hello World! Meet Logan Echolls, Navy Lieutenant and Veronica Mars behavior encyclopedia in his spare time. And also, before I forget, ass saving persona for multiple murderers. _

_ Unintentionally, of course. But it looks like the adverb was erased from Sheriff Lamb’s and family dictionary as soon as they met him. _

When Veronica calms down enough to spill the beans, – after the much mundane “What are you doing here?” and their usual humor dance around the bush – Logan has regained control and the dam looks like it can function again.

( _You made it. You didn’t break. You came close but you didn’t. It’s a good thing, Logan. Keep going now.)_

And then Mac joins them, worry making her look stony and older than twenty-eight. Much, much older. Try elder-ish and scared out of her skull.

What the fuck has happened now? 

Simple, my friends. Veronica Mars is back and so is a hurricane.

.

.

.

Made it, have you Echolls? Yeah, not so much. I.e.: you haven’t made it and who else could prove that if not Veronica?

As soon as Madison’s shrill, content voice fades into silence – are we sure she isn’t stuck at eighteen and with half a functioning brain? – and the video – that _goddamn_ piece of crap – starts, awkward camera angle and buzzing sound and all that, it happens.

He doesn’t just break, though. 

He snaps like a cord that has been pushed too far. It’s quick and relatively painless.

After years Logan Echolls gets into a fight. And it’s such a déjà vu that he briefly considers smiling up at whoever he’s punching the shit out of right now.

However the impulse is as short-lived as summer rain, and by the time the room is wetted out and empty, the idea has vanished into thin, alcohol-breath-smelling air.

He shakes his head away from the blur of the fight and the tape and the first time he saw it and went ballistic and remembers what is at stake here and now on this greedy town on the California coast: falling into the pit, again.

Whether the pit involves jail or a petite blonde with a knack for impersonating and sarcasm, he knows one thing – which hasn’t gotten him anything if not a liver too messed up to be a college student’s and countless sleepless nights – : the pit is deep, and once you fall coming back out is a miracle.

(He already achieved the miracle once. Doing it twice would probably be counting on the fact that God has good graces and he is in them. Yeah, keep dreamin’, lieutenant.)

-:-

The next day they are at Dick’s house trying to put together the backstory to Carrie’s murder.

He feels hopeful and sad all at once. Carrie wasn’t Veronica that’s for sure.

( _Veronica was –_ is, Logan. Is. You’ve never been one for denial. Not to yourself, at least. Quit it – _the love with capital L. The one that rips your heart out. The one you pine for. Go through tons of angst and pain and stuff. Veronica was “It”. The love of your life. Unforgettable, no matter how hard you try. Okay, Echolls, no more sweets for you. Like, ever.)_

But at some point he decided that, as unforgettable as she might be, he had to try and be happy.

Carrie was fun and he did care about her. 

Maybe because they were similar. Or because she helped him through college and afterward and made him feel something he thought he’d never feel again.

One thing he can affirm, though, is the fact that finding her an feeling like the ground was shaking under him was hell and it hurt, just has finding out about Lily had, all those years ago.

As they brain watch around what happened at the reunion and Veronica and Dick bicker, throwing in even Piz, it comes to the point when he realizes he doesn’t have to worry about falling back into the pit. 

_ He already has. _

“ California has the Death penalty, Dick,” she snaps. “You might want to save your buddy here.” It’s laced with humor as usual, but he hears it. She is worried.

_ Well, well, look at that. How is role reversal, Mars? Heavy? Like choking? _

-:-

He never thought he would live enough to see the day when would step into the Mars threshold again. Without being gun threatened, that is.

He is thinking about how he should behave. There’s no doubt that he still feels something for Veronica, something as intense as he felt in high school, but, once this wraps up she will go back to New York, to being a lawyer, – which he is sure she is great at – _to Piz._ He isn’t bothered about that, not really. 

Not anymore.

Not bothered as to beat the hell out of him.

He’s… What’s the word? Happy for her? Yeah, he definitely is.

He just wants to have some sort of relationship with her, to keep in touch when this is over. She is his oldest friend, after all.

He’s glad his life is coming together and all the drama is almost behind him and he’s glad she is part of it again.

After years, Logan Echolls is truly glad.

_ (And of bloody course it doesn’t last) _

-:-

As he runs, the noise of the car crashing echoes through his ears again and again, making him wonder whether it’ll have him bleeding.

His history with Keith is probably even rockier than his and Veronica’s and yet Logan has no idea of what life back in Neptune would be without Mars Senior.

Step after step, second after second, he gets closer to the car – or, more specifically, to what had once been a car.

He pulls Mr. Mars out of the car and crouches down on the asphalt. There’s blood. So much blood he nearly gags.

Admittedly, after years of dealing with war zones, this should be easy to him. Taking care of a civilian is like walking a puppy. _In theory._

Not so much if the civilian you need to get help to has known since you were twelve and seen you go through puberty, voice changes, lankiness and all that. And let’s not forget rage and loss and love and being lost, shall we?

He swallows roughly and presses his finger to Keith’s skin, sticky with blood. He’s pale and limp and – _focus, Logan. Focus._

People are staring from across the street as Veronica comes sprinting out of the house and kneels down next to them, hovering over Keith’s ghost-like body. Her voice is frantic and filled with sobs. “Dad, it’s me. Veronica. Open your eyes,” déjà vù. Again. Sort of. 

_ Nobody told me being twenty-eight meant living physically in Memory Lane. _

He bellows, “Somebody call an ambulance!” and hell-walking begins.

-:-

The hospital is cold and stark.

He feels like he’s seventeen again, walking on shreds of a beloved past that is never coming back. They cut his skin and paint it red. His body is a giant map made of scars.

Time is unbelievably slow, as though hospitals were a pocket world where the Earth moves at turtle speed.

Fatigue slams into him, having his knees buckle. _Keep it_ _together, Echolls_. 

He asks, in a whisper, “Is there someone you want me to call?” He takes a look at her, and his heart slumps down in his chest cavity. Lower and lower by the second. _That’s it. That’s the_ _edge and she is falling over._ “Wallace? Mac? Piz?”Her head moves to the side in slow motion. _No._

Logan doesn’t speak. He doesn’t get up and tell her she should or hug her. It’s not how they roll, as Wallace would say.

Veronica straightens, rubbing away the sleep from her face. “So,” her voice is tired and low. Logan’s stomach clenches tightly. _Keep her talking. She wouldn’t want to break. Not here._

“What do you want to inquire about, Sherlock? Ask away,” he speaks in a hushed tone as well, party because he is aware of how nurses reprimand loud visitors and partly because being alone with Veronica Mars after nine years scares him.

Veronica smiles briefly, before voicing her question. “How’s the Navy?”

Logan waits a couple of beats before saying, “It’s tough, but it’s where I fit. Defending people, who would have put me there, huh?” _Joke around it. Don’t push where it will hurt._ “Besides, I’m kind of great at taking punches.”

Her lips curve up lightly. “Don’t I know it,”

They chat the evening away, putting together the puzzles of each other’s past nine years while willing time to pass and a doctor to come out and talk to them.

When he does, she leaps up from the plastic chair, her muscles stiff yet eager, and grips his arm.

-:-

She falls asleep in his car, after he’s dragged her out of the musty hospital. “Stress would be bad for you, and your dad would have my head if he knew I’d let you sleep here,” he argues when she scowls at his outstretched hand.

He lifts her up and fumbles into her pockets for the keys, trying not to thinking of how badly he wants to hold her.

Once his right hand comes across a sharp metal object he pulls it out slowly, attempting not to drop Veronica in the hall. Hell, who knew a tiny, blonde marshmallow could be so heavy. 

He gets close enough to the bed to lay her down. Getting her shoes off proves much easier than letting himself in and they land on the floor after a few seconds with a soft _thunk._

He covers her curled up figure with a blanket and leaves the room, taking the whole tour of the house twice before stopping dead in the middle of the room and scribbling a quick note for when she wakes up.

_ Call me when you wake up _ . L.

He stops moving, his anxiety going up and up and up inside him like a wild flame. _Alright,you helped her into her bed like a fine gentleman. Now, get to the door and let her rest before she finds you here, still as a stone like a creep._

His feet get one in front of the other until the knob comes into view, and his fingers barely graze it, before freezing in mid-air.

“Wait,” Veronica’s voice sounds like a dream – like one of those he’s had for years. Of her, coming running back to him – quiet and tender. “Don’t go,” and then, in a blink, she slams into him and she’s kissing the life out of him. Her tongue is impatient, hungry and, oh, so greedy. She rips his shirt off with a snap and presses herself into him, her shirt – which had been his a long time ago, and _boy_ , does that fact make his skin feel as hot as the sun because she is against him and holding on to him as though she might drown by doing otherwise _. Way to_ _torture someone, V_ – tickling his bare skin.

They take their time exploring and touching and nibbling, committing their bodies to memory again.

He kisses her lower and lower untill she moans so hard his ears whistle in tune with her.

They are quick and eager, greed making their fingers itch.

His arms keep her anchored to him as he moves away from the wall they had bumped into due to the heat of the moment, while he turns to carry her back toward the bed. The room is silent except for their movements and his blood rushing through his ears like a siren. He’s not going to last much longer at this rate.

Her legs close themselves across his torso, as her mouth leaves his for the space of a breath, and his hand roams on her back, her ass and the back of her legs.

Once they get to the bed, they’re nothing but a mess of limbs humming with wantand heavy breathes and too many clothes.

He lets her lie down on the bed, first. And just like that what is about to happen hits him in a flash: he’s about to have sex with Veronica Mars again. _After all this time_.

He takes a shaky breath as he slides into bed next to her. Her chest is still cyclingly rising and falling when he pops himself up on his elbows to look at her.

He doesn’t notice who moves first. One moment his eyes are taking in her ruffled appearance and the way her shorts hug her thighs and the shape of her knee and the amount of skin they leave free and the next their mouths are colliding again, fire spreading with each touch. The kiss tastes like a wild fire, intense and sudden and consuming.

Veronica lets him go, panting softly. Her breath comes in hot waves and makes him hyperaware of how close they actually are, causing his nerves to be as sharp as needles beneath his skin.

Logan lets his left hand run along the line of her hip, the tips of his fingers pressing the tissue of the short lower and lower untill it slides away.

Logan thinks he’s never been this slow with her. It’s always been about grasping each other while fearing they might loose one another.

He’s still frozen in his thoughts when Veronica leans toward his bare chest, raising one hand to press it into his skin. “Logan,” she mutters urgently. “If you don’t hurry, I swear I’m gonna go to Dick,” and she presses her head to his chest, before leaving a trail of kisses from his sternum to his stomach, quick and deliberately chaste. _Looks like the bobcat has been left starving lately._

He grips her by the shoulders and rolls them both so that he finds himself on top of her.

He kisses her nose. “You,” her lips. “Are,” her chin. “Too,” his mouth runs along her neck, slowly, tenderly and then the curve of her right shoulder. “Clothed,” his voice is husky and he feels as though he were nineteen and she’d just left and then, by some kind of miracle, come back much sooner. 

_ How in hell has he gone on for nine years without her? _

Her shirt comes off in what might be a new Guinness World Record and he finds himself staring at her breasts.

His hand moves along her curves as though he had keep to image for himself for a long time after this.

(Which is painfully true)

After grazing her whole body lightly, with both his hands and calloused fingers and his teeth, he starts thrusting gently.

( _This is something I want to do. For real. Do you want me to?_ He asks with each movement, even the smallest)

Veronica arches from under him, sinking her nails in the tender skin of his shoulder blades, deeper and deeper with each groan and “Please, Logan,”

Their hips roll in synch the whole time. As he strokes her skin lightly, after her orgasm has had her curling her toes. Before they collapse into sleep, their limbs still enterwined.

-:-

Veronica almost dies. _Déjà-fucking-vù._

He gets her out of the Sheriff Department as soon as the end of her statement is out of her mouth.

His body isn’t shaking when they get into her apartment, though. 

It’s been nine years from the last time he felt his stomach sinking like that. It sucks as much as it used to.

He stares at her until he’s sure he will remember what she’s wearing and her wide eyes and her pale face for as long as he’s able to breath.

That night he holds her until her nightmares fade, kissing her forehead time and time again as he murmurs soothing words in her hair, “Sssh, Bobcat. You got out of it. It’s okay,”

-:-

The camera clicks just as Veronica starts to stir.

She mumbles sleepily, “No, it’s too early,”

_ Amen to that, Mars. _

It seems like they’ve grown up, but their timing is still rusty. 

He throws on his hat and smirks at her pensive expression. _Boy, Mars aren’t you a naughty girl._

He smiles, as he quotes _, “Our story is epic, spanning years and contents…_ ”

She grins back, no uncertainty heaving her features, her gaze fond as she intones solemnly, “… _lives ruined, bloodshed,_ ”

Their story has always been a mess, as beautiful and complicated as a riddles that forms an image once solved.

This time, though, it doesn’t get ripped into pieces. It puts deeper roots into the ground.

Before heading out the door Logan says, “What’s a hundred and eighty days to us?”

Veronica utters, “come back to me,” and smiles.

He responds in a hoarse whisper, “Always,” 

It’s a promise he won’t break.And if there’s something Logan has never intended to break that is Veronica and what they have.

Logan leaves for his deployment and thinks, _this time I have someone I want to come home and I will._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
